


Where the Night Goes

by HatariHatari



Series: Sermon on the Rocks [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Post-High school AU, Songfic, What's all this plot getting in the way of my porn?, small town fic, tropefest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HatariHatari/pseuds/HatariHatari
Summary: "I wasn’t exactly welcome back around town."“Getting caught with the sheriff’s son’s dick in your mouth can do that."Two childhood friends meet after five years apart.





	Where the Night Goes

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Whoo for late entry for the GW End of Summer Block Party! I had a couple different ideas for AUs, and each one started to balloon far out of proportion. This one runs the risk of doing the same, in that I have other ideas for the universe, but for now, I have this part tied down. 
> 
> It’s also a songfic! Based loosely (very loosely) on Where the Night Goes by Josh Ritter, and really the whole universe could be based on the album. It’s a good listen. 
> 
> Look! It's a url for the music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpw_3z84T_w
> 
> A huge thanks to Chronicwhimsy on Tumblr for beta'ing this fic!

_I admit it’s been slow going_  
 _You pay your bills and still they own ya_  
 _You know the way with best laid plans_  
 _Til this is me and that’s who I am (now)_  
 _I make the rounds and pay my dues_  
 _Meet up with friends and I dream about you_  
 _It isn’t much but it’s still a lot_  
 _Sometimes honey I still get lost_  
  
_In those long nights, old cars_  
 _Backroads and the boneyards_  
 _You dropped the pedal like a holy roller_  
 _Sheriff of hell couldn’t pull you over_

_Tough girl from the bad town_   
_Brought up not to stay down_   
_Sweet tea, white lightning_   
_Breaking hearts and not minding_

 

~*~

If you were seeing him for the first time, the way I saw him for the first time, you would think an angel just floated into the Bloomdale Diner, his hair a halo around his face and his smile so wide you’d think he was seeing God Himself.

Fortunately, I’ve known Quatre Winner since we were in kindergarten, and I know better. Four years of college wasn’t going to change the devil of a boy I knew into anything but a devil of a man.

“Don’t tell me I’ve driven five hours for a burger for you to turn the grill off on me, Odin,” he called cheerfully from the doorway.

“Odin died last year,” I answered, carrying my bucket of dishes from a now-empty table back to the sink. “But I can fix you a burger, if you’d like.”

  
“Oh. Oh! Heero!” He faltered a moment but bounced back quick enough, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry to hear that. Are you helping out here tonight?”

I snorted, looking him up and down. We’d all heard the story after graduation, of course. After the scandal of the century, Mr. Winner’s son was shipped up north to bible college to get his head straight. His khakis were pressed, his collared shirt was impeccable, not a damn wrinkle for all that he drove five hours here. On his daddy’s payroll to the end, then.

But he also had an earring. In the wrong ear. And I still recognized the way he cocked his hip to the side, leaning up against the doorway of the diner. “Sit down, Quat. I’ll cook you something. Odin would be ashamed of how skinny you are.”

He raised his eyebrow at that, but sat down at the bar, watching as I started a load of fries and fired up the grill. Slowly, he caught on. And frowned. “So, you’re not just helping bus tables tonight? For the football game and all?”

I shrugged. “I’m the only person on tonight, at least until the game lets out. That’s what I usually do. So the kids don’t have to work during the game.” Just like Odin used to do for me.

“So you work here. At the diner?” He asked, confused.

I nodded. “Odin kept me on after graduation. Once he started getting sick, it didn’t seem fair to leave him.”

“But you had a scholarship-”

“State dropped me from my scholarship.” I cleared my throat, flipping the burger patty over. “My appendix burst that summer, put me off the track for months.”

“Oh Heero,” Quatre started, and I clenched the spatula in my hand. I hadn’t had to hear that tone of voice in four years, I sure as hell wasn’t dealing with it tonight.

“And I’ve done just fine without it, Quatre. It’s fine. I keep my bills paid, and I take care of myself.”

  
“But Heero, if I’d known you hadn’t gone to school-”

“I’m sorry about your dad, Quatre.” It was a low blow, but it did the trick. The pity wiped off his face immediately, and he shrugged, looking away. I knew why he had come back, finally. A bitter smile flashed on his face as he began to speak.

“Well you know, only the good die young. I’m just surprised the old bastard didn’t live until he was 100.”

I nodded, fixing his burger up, just like he’d always liked it in school, and set the plate in front of him. “Big funeral tomorrow, I’d imagine.”

“Big circus, you mean- Jesus, Heero, I can’t eat all this!” he exclaimed.

“I’ve seen you eat twice this in one setting, then wash it down with a milkshake,” I countered, sitting on Odin’s old barstool across the counter from him. “Eat up.”

“Well a lot’s changed since I could do that. Mainly my metabolism,” he teased, pushing the plate closer to me. “At least help with the fries.”

  
I shrugged, squirted some ketchup beside the fries, and took to eating my share while he tucked into the burger. For awhile, it was as if nothing had changed. It was after school, I was working my part time shift, Quatre was stopping in on his way home to eat more food than any one person should, talk shit about whatever had happened in school that day, ask if I was going to the game and did I need a ride, he had the Mustang tonight.

We’d been best friends, once upon a time.

“You’re right,” I blurted suddenly, feeling my neck flush at my embarrassment. “A lot’s changed since you left. You didn’t exactly visit, after…” I shrugged.

“Dad thought it was for the best. I wasn’t exactly welcome back around town,” he countered.

“Getting caught with the sheriff’s son’s dick in your mouth can do that,” I snapped, then ducked my head.

He looked like I’d slapped him for a minute, slack jawed, before he started laughing, his giggles bordering on hysteria. I watched him dumbly. “I missed that. I missed how blunt you could be.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You covered the situation perfectly. It was too much to hope the whole town didn’t know.”

I smirked despite myself. “You’ve never been one to care what the whole town thought.”

“And I still don’t. I’d wear my mother’s best dress to the funeral tomorrow, if I didn’t think the city council’d burn me at the stake.” He reached for a fry himself, dipping it in the ketchup, then pointing it at me. “All right, you stated your point. Now tell me,what’s changed? Looks like the same goddamn rundown town I’ve always known. Little dustier, maybe.”

I felt a twitch of anger at the way he said that, like he hadn’t loved this town heart and soul before he had to leave. Like he’d gone away and bettered himself to the point he couldn’t claim where he was from. “Well, they built a new courthouse.”

“Oh?”

“And they renovated the library.”

“Uh huh.”

“We got a Mexican place, but it shut down about six months ago.”

“Too bad.” He took a long drink of his sweet tea before he asked what he’d really been after. “What’s everybody up to these days?”

I snorted. “You came to me for gossip? Really?”

“Oh hardly. I came to Odin for gossip, and sounds like you’re the new Odin. So what’s everyone up to? You work at the diner…”

“I work at the diner. Uh, both the Peacecrafts went off to school, Relena’s back to teach Kindergarten. Milliardo went to law school.”

“Of course he did, the man is slicker than an oil spill,” Quatre snarked, and I smirked. It had always stung in school, that there was a boy just as well off as Quatre, and twice as popular.

“Chang married Meilan, he’s working at the library, taking some online classes to be a librarian, replace Ms. Une when she retires”. Or gets eaten by cats.

Quatre raised his eyebrows. “That was quick. They’d just started dating right before we graduated.”

There I had real gossip. “They had a pregnancy scare, not too long after you left. Enough that Chang decided to make an honest woman of her, I guess.”

“What about Duo?”

“Working at the factory. But he’s been talking about seminary, before he spends his whole life making washer parts.”

Quatre balked. “How can he be a preacher if the church catches on fire when he enters it?”

Well, shit. “You really didn’t hear a word from your dad after you left, did you?”

“About my friends? No. About how I was a shameful abomination and if I at all loved my family I’d get a nice little wife in Missouri? Plenty.” He sobered up a little when I looked down. “What happened?”

“There was an accident at the sawmill, about two years after you left. Solo died, and Duo quit that day, started at the factory the next. Got religion a little while after.”

“Shit. Bet Howard didn’t take it well.” Howard had adopted Duo, just a year shy of 18, after he’d been passed through foster care for a half dozen years, all while Solo tried to get custody sorted out. Howard had said he’d done it to keep Solo working at the mill for shit pay, but everyone knew how he cared for the two brothers.

“He does all right. Getting older.”

“Most people do,” Quatre agreed, grimly.

We ate in silence for awhile after that. I hadn’t caught him up completely, and he knew that. I knew that. And if he hadn’t heard about Solo, or Odin, or Wufei and Meilan Chang, he sure as hell had no clue about what he wanted to ask. What he always wanted to know about.

It took about five minutes of eating in silence before he came around to it. “How’s old Dekim?”

“Old, still Sheriff.” I considered making him ask directly, but I’m not that cruel. “Prouder than hell of Lieutenant Barton.”

“Lieutenant Barton,” he breathed, I imagine before he could stop himself. “He really did ship him off?”

“Straight into some military academy, from there into the Marines.” I took his drink from, taking a sip. “He visited about a year ago.”

“How was he?” Quatre blushed, looking down. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to talk about him-”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He flinched when I answered. “But he was taller. Cut all his hair off.”

“But how was he, Heero? Did he seem okay? Is he-”

“Barton and I don’t make a habit of talking to each other,”I snapped, setting his drink down a little too hard.

Trowa Barton, from the day he was born, had had everything I’d wanted. A mom and a dad. The letterman jacket I couldn’t afford. The all-state scholarship he hadn’t needed to go to school.

And Quatre. He’d had Quatre too, before all was said and done.

“He’s still your brother,” Quatre snipped.

“Half-brother, and a shit one at that,” I replied.

Quatre said nothing.

Down the road at the football field, I could hear trucks rumbling to life, and checked the time. 9 PM. About five minutes from the diner being overrun with either exuberant or angry football fans, depending on how the game went.

A personal hell for Quatre, judging by his suddenly pale face. Maybe he cared more for the town’s opinion than he’d like to admit.

“Staying at your sister’s?” I asked.

“I could,” he answered. “Pleasant as that would be.”

I shrugged. “I’m staying in the back at Odin’s. I can’t leave the kids in charge tonight, or they’ll rob me blind, but you can bunk out there. I ought to be in by midnight.” Technically, I owned Odin’s trailer. And the diner. But a hundred years from now, it’d still be called Odin’s place.

  
“I do have some schoolwork to work on, if you don’t mind me staying over.”

“Go on, door’s unlocked. I’ll be in when I can.”

His face melted into a smile at that, and he stood up, fishing for his wallet. “Thank you, Heero. You didn’t have to-”

“Go, get out before they descend on this place like locusts.” I waved him off. “I’ll see you when I see you, okay?”

“Midnight?” he asked, unsure and standing in the doorway.

“I’ll try,” I answered, then set to cleaning up his plate. I kept my back turned as he left, moving his car back behind the trailer as he did.

Son of a bitch. He was home.

~*~

Most people wouldn’t be so nosy as to notice the shiny BMW parked back behind Odin’s trailer.

Most people weren’t Duo Maxwell.

“I see you got a visitor, Yuy. You ought to give Jesus a run for his money, you goddamned martyr,” he barked, sitting down in the seat Quatre had left not an hour before.

He was in a school football shirt, so I figured he’d been to the game. His eyes were also glassy and his breath sharp, so he’d probably come the long way to the diner, by the bar first. The county had gone wet since Quatre left, and I made a note to myself to tell him about that, too.

Maybe I hadn’t been fully open with Quatre. Duo would make a hell of a preacher on Sunday morning. Never missed a service since Solo died. But he made a hell of a drunk the other six days of the week, soon as he left the factory.

“You talk to Jesus with that mouth?” I asked him drolly.

He ignored the jibe, more in his wits than I’d originally thought. “That guy’s kin to half the people in this town, he shouldn’t be bothering you for a place to stay.”

“It’s fine, Duo. It’s just for tonight.”

“Well he’s a Winner, through and through. Use you up and spit you out, just like his dad and this whole goddamn town. But at least we get paid for it.” He leaned over the counter, watching me cook. “Don’t you get tired of pining after him like a dog in heat?”

“Shut up,” I hissed, looking around. “Don’t you get tired of cheap whiskey?”

He pointed at me accusingly. “Cheap whiskey makes me happy.”

“He makes me happy.”

“He makes you sick as hell.” Duo laughed at himself. “But whiskey does the same. Fine, burn your life down, Yuy. See if I care this time.”

I ignored him after that, leaving one of the high school kids working to take care of his meal and his tab. Duo was never anything but kind with the kids. But for me, Duo turned from a cheerful drunk to an angry one quick.

There had been a short time, between Quatre leaving for college and Solo dying that Duo and I might have had something. But death makes a man either give up on God completely, or spend his whole life trying to get right with Him. Once Solo died the way he did, Duo decided to spend the rest of his life beating himself up about it.

When Odin died, I figured I’d taken the former route, having never been particularly religious to begin with. But sometimes I looked around the diner, unchanged, and I wasn’t so sure.

~*~

Midnight had come quickly enough- the team had won that night, and for some reason, celebrating never takes as long as commiserating does. Wufei took Duo home to Howard’s, and I was able to shut up and be back to the house before too much later.

Quatre had packed up whatever he’d been working on for the night, but still sat at the yellow kitchen table, glass of milk beside him. We’d all visited Odin’s trailer at some point or another, so he’d known his way around. I hadn’t changed anything since he’d died, after all.

I’m not sure how he found it, but when I came in, Quatre was pouring over an old newspaper clipping Odin had from when we were kids, the year our team won little league. One picture had our little gang together around the trophy- Duo, back before his parents died, with his always too long hair in his face. Wufei in those damn thick glasses, one of the two Chinese kids in school. Quatre, the son of the richest man in town, and Trowa, the son of the sheriff. And me, the son of a diner waitress.

Paperclipped to the newspaper article was a picture taken of me and Trowa, missing matching teeth and with our arms over each shoulders. We were nearly as close as Quatre and I when we were kids. Back before we knew what all the adults knew, back when I used to lie in bed at night and pray that Odin Lowe was secretly my dad, and that someday he’d marry my mom. Back when Dekim Barton was just the cruel and crooked local sheriff that Trowa was saddled with as a dad. Before he was my dad, too.

“You never really looked alike,” Quatre murmured, though he at least had the decency to look sheepish.

“Neither of us really take after Dekim,” I replied, not quite ready to blow up over it. It’s just what Quatre did. “There’s too much of our mothers in the both of us.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” Quatre replied. “This town would burn to the ground with another Dekim Barton in it.”

“That may be what we get, by the time Trowa gets out of service.” I sat down at the kitchen table with him. “I hear they beat the nice right out of people.”

“Trowa’s too kind for that. You’ve both always been entirely too kind.” Quatre smoothed the newspaper article, then looked up at me. “I should’ve said something before now. I should’ve visited. Dad wouldn’t have tried hard to stop me.”

“You were busy.”

“For four years? I was hiding. I guess I was embarrassed.”

“By what you did? Or getting caught?”

“A little of both?” He tried. “Well, mostly the getting caught, but still. It’s not how I imagined my graduation party going.”

“What, staring down the sheriff’s gun?” I asked sarcastically. “I don’t think even you could be that kinky.”

Quatre raised his eyebrows. “Heero Yuy just used kinky in a sentence. I’ll be damned. Next you’ll tell me you’re not even a virgin anymore.”

“Like I said, a lot has changed.” I tensed as Quatre rested his hand over mine. He’d never been afraid of physical affection, but he’d also been gone four years. I don’t think I’d gotten this close to someone since Odin died, and Quatre- Quatre was different.

“Care to elaborate on those changes?” He asked, running his fingers over my arm, making the hair stand on end.

Only Quatre Winner. Only he could make me feel sixteen like this, this bubbling well of fear and anger and arousal boiling over. “Quatre, I’m not him,” I warned. “You know I’m not.”

I expected him to pull away at that, like he had times before, but instead his touch grew firmer, more assured. “Good, I don’t want you to be him. I want you.”

I swallowed hard. “Don’t.”

“You have any idea how gorgeous you are? Jesus, I was a dumb kid,” he whispered, scooting closer until he was on the edge of his chair.

“You’re still a dumb kid,” I managed, but I shivered when he stood up over me, tangling his hands in my hair. He tugged my face up to look at him.

“Heero?” he purred. “Take me to bed?”

Quatre leaned over me, kissing me soundly until I stood up from the chair, clumsy, knocking it over as I followed him towards the back bedroom.

“Just to sleep?” I asked weakly, little as I wanted to. I was tired, sure, I’d been in the diner since that morning, cooking and cleaning and serving. But here was Quatre Winner, taller and filled out and pressing every part of his body up against mine in the doorway of the bedroom, tugging at my plaid shirt as if he’d just as soon pop the buttons as undo them. Quatre Winner, who I’d spent every afternoon and weekend with since I was old enough to walk from my place to his, who I spent every summer weekend of early adolescence lying next to dreaming of just this right now.

“We can sleep,” he promised, chuckling. “But let’s see where the night goes, huh? Heero?” He must have noticed my discomfort, finally, because he pulled back, holding me by the shoulders and studying my face. Because I wasn’t fifteen and mortified anymore, I didn’t look away, and something in his face softened, and he pulled me into a hug. “Jesus, I’m sorry. Look, just like old times, right? That’s all.”

Old times. Sure. I sighed, grabbing his hand and pulling him back towards the bed, sitting him down on it as he undid his shirt, as I undid my own. “You make me crazy, Quatre Winner,” I grumbled, crawling into bed, resisting the urge to jerk away when he crawled in after me, tucking his legs into the crook of mine and wrapping his arm around my midsection.

“It’s what I do,” he responded, talking into the back of my neck, and settled easily enough into sleep. Easier than I ever did like this.

~*~

That night I dreamed about Quatre. About school. About a time when Trowa Barton was nothing more than a passing fascination for Quatre, that quiet asshole on the football team we used to call a friend. Back when we spent our nights tearing up the back roads of Bloomdale, drinking booze from the Winner liquor cabinet and hiding out from the sheriff’s department’s curfew check.

In the dream, we’d been sitting out in the Noins’ field, one of Quatre’s mom’s quilts underneath us, and too little liquor left in the bottle. Quatre was tracing my lips with his fingers, and I was trying not to breathe, because if I breathed, I was sure I’d moan or do something equally embarrassing.

That had happened, often enough. Even a few kisses here and there, shy and quick and covered up the next morning under the guise of too much liquor, and I’d always nodded along, agreed and hoped he hadn’t noticed that he always drank the bulk of it.

But now the dream went farther, and suddenly we were naked, Quatre writhing beneath me like he’d never done, his arms around my neck, his breath at my ear, and I groaned into the crook of his neck between thrusts. That had happened often enough, too, at least in dreams.

But I’d reached up, brushed my hair back, and it clicked. My hair was too light, and too long. I’d always had my mother’s hair, thick and unruly and dark, but suddenly in the dream I had long, light brown hair I was pushing out of the way, the realization hitting me just as Quatre moaned his name, looking up at me just like he never quite did look at me.

I woke with a jolt, sweaty and sick and hard all at the same time.

~*~

Quatre was gone before I woke up, not that I had figured he’d stay. I’d scheduled one of the girls to come in and run the diner that morning, so I left the trailer at 6 in my jeans, unlocked the diner for her, and went back in to get ready. The place would be pretty well empty until after the funeral, after all, save the regular old men who’d come for their morning coffee.

I’d called it a big funeral, but I hadn’t really had an idea of how big it could be. The factory had even shut down for a Saturday, and nearly everyone poured into the church for the main event. The town florist had to be sold out, judging by the display near the (thankfully closed) casket.

Quatre was sitting with the family between his sister, Iria, and Rashid, who had worked at the factory about as long as Quatre’s father had owned it. Quatre was as well dressed as the rest of them; he wore a black suit with a gray shirt, leaving his skin looking like wax. He’d taken the earring out, probably at Iria’s behest.

For all that Quatre had loved a scandal when we were younger, he was perfectly serious and somber at the funeral, shaking hands at the graveside when the procession came through.

I’d considered not going through the procession, but sandwiched between the Changs and the Peacecrafts, I had no choice but to shake his hand.

“Thank you, Heero. For everything,” he said, and I looked up when I heard how hoarse his voice was. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his cheeks splotchy. Holy hell, hollow as I’d felt when I woke up alone this morning, I couldn’t help but feel worse for him when I saw him looking like that.

“Anytime,” I told him, and felt Wufei tense next to me. Either he picked up more than he let on, or Duo had already run to him to start spreading rumors through the grapevine. Things never changed entirely. “Headed back to school next week?”

“Monday night,” he answered. “Some business to take care of Monday morning. I’ll come by the diner before I go.”

I nodded, seeing the lie for what it was, before moving on with the crowd, intent on getting the hell out of the cemetery and back to the diner.

~*~

Like I’d figured, Quatre didn’t show up at the diner that afternoon. Much as he’d hate to be compared to the deceased Mr. Winner, he was the son of a businessman at heart. He knew how to make a polite promise that he’d never follow through on, after all.

So Quatre didn’t show at the diner. Meilan came by around eleven to pick up lunch to take to Wufei at the library, and when the whistle blew for lunch, the diner filled with its usual crowd- if I was being honest, the factory crowd was the only thing really keeping the diner running, and I still wondered how Odin handled paying for everything and the cancer treatments, when it came time. After the factory workers headed back to work, I had a little quiet, with later lunch eaters, and Relena Peacecraft coming by after school for a “bad day” milkshake, brought on by her newest student, the mayor’s spoiled daughter that was giving Quatre and Duo a run for their money on being shit students.

All in all, I didn’t get back to the trailer until after four, with just enough time to relax and check the mail, gather my thoughts before dinner.

The thing about living in a small town, is you never lock your door, because most nobody is going to break in, and if they do, they’ll let it slip to someone who will tell your cousin who will tell you to tell the Sheriff, and eventually you’ll get most of your shit back in one way or another.

I reminded myself of this when I saw the wreck Odin’s trailer was in: door wide open, tv tables upended, a broken plate. It looked like a tornado had come through, right under my nose, and here it wasn’t even the right season for one.

Turns out it wasn’t a tornado, which I figured when I found someone had drunk half of my Jim Beam whiskey, leaving the bottle open on the counter. Duo, maybe, though he ought to still be at the factory at this time.

I checked the bedroom last and sighed. Not Duo then.

“Don’t suppose you feel like helping me clean up in here,” I dead panned, while Quatre struggled to sit up straight, wobbling.

“Oh Heero.”

“I know you have to grieve, but you could do it a little less destructively,” I sniped.

“Grieve? I’ll kill him- I’d kill him if he wasn’t already dead!” Quatre’s voice cracked as he hauled himself to his feet, and I stepped back.

We’d all sneaked drinks in high school, and with Quatre’s ever-absent, but ever-wealthy dad, he’d been the king of mixing drinks at a sixteen year old level. We’d been drunk plenty of times, but I’d never seen him an angry drunk like this.

“Anger’s a part of the grieving process?” I offered, inching back to the doorway.

He laughed, and the laugh chilled me, taking a hysterical edge as he reached for the empty glass on the nightstand, narrowly missing it. “Iri- Iria’s worked for him since she got out of school, you know? She made that factory her life.”

“Yeah. She runs it as much as he does- did.”

“They read the will this morning, and he left it to me. The whole goddamned factory.” He voice broke, and the laughter turned to sobs. “Just left her the house- Mom’s house, that she didn’t even fucking care about. And he, he fucking chained me to that damn factory. He ruined my life here, and now he’s chained me down to it. For a year.” This time he caught hold of the glass, and took a sloppy drink which made me wince.

I hadn’t wanted to say it. But I’d always said it before, and always would, when it came down to it. Still, I almost didn’t recognize my own voice when I asked him. “So do you want to stay here?”

“What?” He asked blearily.

“Well,” I started, slowly, “Sounds like Iria won’t want you around, but the spare bedroom is here. It’s not much, but if you don’t mind it-”

“Goddammit Heero Yuy, are you applying for sainthood or what?” he snapped.

“It’s still got the baseball wallpaper on it,” I warned, and he laughed brokenly, remembering my bedroom from when we’d first met, when Mom and I had been staying behind the diner, with her boss, before we moved out to the park down the road.

“What the hell. CEO living out of a trailer built in the sixties. I’ll give it a go.” He looked around sheepishly. “Guess I better move rooms. Unless…” He smiled a small little smile, hopeful. The kind of smile that had gotten him through school, gotten him out of trouble with the sheriff (until it hadn’t)- hell, had nearly gotten him into my pants last night. Until it hadn’t.

“Yeah, I guess you better,” I agreed, before I could say anything else, and left the room, opening the door across the hall. “I’ll be home by seven, just have to get the dinner rush started tonight,” I told him, before leaving the trailer.

When I was a kid, Odin’s place was my refuge away from life, even after Mom and I moved into our own trailer. I didn’t turn back as I stalked across the yard to the diner, but I knew, without a doubt, that I’d just given up my last hiding place to the very thing I’d been hiding from.


End file.
